ANDREW GABLE: The Untold Story of the Houston Batman

One of the iconic sightings of a mysterious creature in the UFO era, that of the so-called Houston Batman, was made on June 18, 1953. Hilda Walker, Judy Meyers and Howard Phillips saw a “man with wings like a bat” sitting in the branches of a nearby tree, watching them. After a few moments there was a light display and the “Batman” was gone. The story is a classic in the annals of UFO encounters and associated creature sightings, and is dealt with in full in Ken Gerhard and Nick Redfern’s Monsters of Texas, and Loren Coleman’s Mysterious America, where it is dealt with in connection to that likewise-iconic phantom attacker, the British bogeyman known as Spring-heel'd Jack.

It turns out the likening to Jack and other phantom attackers may be particularly apt. The Lubbock Evening Journal for May 22, 1953 bore the headline “’Phantom Attacker’ Strikes in Full View of Two Officers.” The article told the story of Betty Lee Jamison, a young woman who was walking on Richmond Avenue when a man lunged from a crowd, knocked her to the ground, and fled with four men in pursuit – two policemen and two men coming out of a nearby bar. The man still escaped. Frank Murray of the Houston police department told the newspapers that it was the 13th such attack in the space of a year. I could find no references to the earlier attacks; perhaps some other intrepid CFZ member could, however.

The Mexia Daily News for June 12 (only a week before the sighting of the “Batman”) reported another attack. This time a woman was pulled bodily from a car. Again, the attacker fled. And still the attacks came, even after the sighting of the man in the tree. On May 7, 1954, the Galveston Daily News reported that an attack had taken place only two days before, but this was dealt with in no more than a passing manner. Once again, I could find no references in the intervening time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Regardless, on May 6, 1954, an underwear-clad man described as a “prominent Houstonian… superintendent of a Houston hospital" was arrested and charged with indecent exposure and vagrancy after police received several calls that he was driving around town fully in the nude. To this he admitted, but he denied any involvement in the Houston attacks when questioned. In true Fortean tradition, though, I’m going to guess the saga of the attacker came to an end there, whether or not the man was actually responsible.

The El Paso Herald-Post, on April 13, 1953, carried the story of another attacker, described as a black man, who robbed, attacked women and in one case, murdered, in the vicinity of Waco. This very well may have been a criminal of the more conventional type (as the one in Houston could have been), but I mention it in regards to reports that he “flashed a light in [his victims’] faces,” a typical Springheel activity.

Whether the “Houston phantom” truly explains away the Batman remains to be seen. At the very least, it should establish that a mindset of fear existed among Houston’s residents at the time. It likely is the explanation for why there were several witnesses to the Batman. Or, it may suggest that there is much, much more to the Batman story than one isolated sighting.-- Andrew D. Gable CFZ-US State Rep: Pennsylvania/Maryland http://masksofmesingw.blogspot.com/

ANDREW GABLE: The swamp monster hysteria of 1938

In February 1938 the seaside districts of Pensacola, Florida, were held in the grip of a most peculiar case of mass hysteria. This was the reign of a six-armed, six-legged, panther-headed gorilla called the Goon of Guillemard Street. The sewer monster made most of its rumoured appearances on Guillemard and Romana Streets. People were afraid to leave their homes, partly due to fear that the monster would drop off a roof or from a tree limb and attack them. On one occasion, the police were called out to St Michael's Cemetery on Alcaniz Street to investigate a sighting of the monster.

The Goon's death, though, didn't come at the hands of the police or the armed posses, which took to the streets. It came at the hand of the root of all evil: the almighty dollar.

It seemed that the merchants and businessmen of Southeast Pensacola were distressed at the loss of cash-flow inspired by the chimera. After all, if people wouldn't take to the streets from fear of something that made the man-eating clown in It look like a rank amateur of the sewer monster circuit, they certainly weren't spending any money. So the merchants got together and created an urban legend of their own; one which said the Goon tried to attack a car bound for Mobile, Alabama, and was killed.

The story may have been false but it killed the rumours. The Goon of Guillemard Street was no more.

The legend was spawned by an incident that January in (coincidentally, or were Pensacola's merchants wise to the Goon's origins?) Mobile, Alabama. Some kind of monster had slithered out from the swamps and slaughtered someone's dog. This one was christened the Frankenstein of Fisher's Alley, and once it had a catchy name the urban legends took off - it was covered in a bullet-proof shell. Its size? Some said it was cougar-sized. Some said Great-Dane-sized. Some even said Tyrannosaurus-Rex-sized. Nobody could agree. Some of the faceless experts that plague these sorts of accounts felt it was a wild dog, a wildcat, or a bear.

Then Frankenstein was caught. The swamp monster was only an otter. A big one, to be fair, but an otter.

It was thought that the stories of the Mobile monster migrated eastward, took root in Pensacola, and in good urban legend fashion were embellished. The monster was made more spectacular, and the Goon of Guillemard Street was born.

A BIG THANK-YOU TO SYD...

...who pointed out that I made a cock-up in my links the other day. If you were unable to get to Andrew Gable's centaur article, you can find it at:
http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/12/andrew-gable-man-horse-of-arkansas.html

ANDREW GABLE: The Man-Horse of Arkansas

Something for the blog. Note: I don't believe this story at all. But it's neat.

Strange Phenomenon.

“A strange Phenomenon has made its appearance in Van Buren County, Arkansas. Some people call it a horse, while others affirm that it is a man. At any rate, nothing in natural history can account for it. Its head has every semblance of a horse’s, while its body is unmistakably that of a man. When first seen it was standing in a road with its head over the fence, looking intently at a man plowing in the field. There was something so wild in the expression of the supposed horse’s eyes, and such a snap to his eyelids, producing such a peculiar sound, that the man left the plow and went up to the fence. His surprise and terror at seeing a horse’s head on a man’s shoulders knew no bounds, but his legs did, and springing away he ran toward the house. The man-horse, seeing that the plowman “fleed” when no man-horse “pursueth,” climbed over the fence and walked to the plow, took up the lines and started the horse. The owner had witnessed this, having stopped. Gathering courage he went back slowly and cautiously, approaching the most peculiar freak of nature he had ever seen. When he had come within a few yards of the plow, the man-horse stopped, turned, and remarked:

“’You seem afraid of me. Approach.’

The man felt impelled by some unaccountable power, and when he was within a few feet of the man-horse experienced a slight sensation in his feet, and looking down discovered that instead of feet he had a pair of hoofs. He had evidently exchanged with his horse, for instead of hoofs on the front the horse had human feet, and seemed equally as much dissatisfied with them as the man did with the hoofs. After performing this piece of magic the man-horse ran away. It may be necessary to add that the man to whom the phenomenon presented the hoofs is known in the neighborhood as a ‘Guinea nigger’ [i.e., he was a house-servant rather than a field slave]. His plow-horse has not been seen since that memorable day. The man still retains his hoofs, and was last seen at a blacksmith-shop having himself shod. He knows them to be the hoofs of the horse, for there are marks on them that render unmistakable recognition. This story, a neighborhood superstition, does not come in a roundabout way, but down the Fort Smith Railroad, one of the straightest roads in the South. It will not, however, take its place in a library of Sunday-school fiction. It is stated, and with some degree of truth, that the old negro, suffering from elephantiasis, became crazy and started the story.”

Indiana (Pa.) Gazette, September 18, 1879

ANDREW GABLE: Blue Dog Thoughts (1)

I’ve been attempting to contribute somewhat to the Blue Dog research going on in Texas, or at least as much as I can contribute being in the eastern US and unable to offer any real assistance beyond trying to keep up on reports of similar animals, sometimes from other states as well. Which is why I was intrigued when a hairless coyote was reported from Steelton, PA (a suburb of Harrisburg) just this week, on July 20 (it’s bizarrely coincidental that this happens to come only a week or so after several of the hairless canines were shot in Hood County, Texas). Although “mangy coyote” is a common explanation for the Blue Dogs, an examination of the photo of the animal (http://www.wgal.com/news/24323601/detail.html) reveals a few differences. There is a good deal of facial resemblance, implying that indeed the Texas dogs may be at least part coyote, but the Steelton animal lacks the rougher hide of the Texas animals. Also the hind legs appear to be shorter than on the Texas animals, and the ears (although difficult to see clearly) appear to be pointed rather than the more rounded ears on many of the Texas ones.

This isn’t the first hairless animal in the Pennsylvania/Maryland area, however. A family living in a rural area near Joppa (Harford County), Maryland reported a bald canine beastie roaming their property in the summer of 2003. Apparently amateur cryptozoologists, they set up game cameras and captured several photos of the animal, including one of it drinking from a horse trough. In the summer of 2004, a similar animal was seen near Glyndon (Baltimore County), same state. Photographs were also taken of the Glyndon animal, and soon the two Maryland animals were given the name Hyote (hyena/coyote), although the two may not have even been the same individual. At least it wasn’t called Chupacabra, though… in the Glyndon case, though, an animal was captured on the property soon afterwards. The captured beast turned out to be a young red fox with a severe case of sarcoptic mange (some veterinarians felt it may have been afflicted with some sort of endocrine disorder, and not mange).

Autumn, 2005 saw the first reports of the rather endearingly, but unfortunately, named creature called the Yardley Yeti (admittedly, it was also called Lower Makefield Lurker, Bucks County Boggart, or New Hope Hyena, but none of those have the ring of the first name). The animal was sighted in the area surrounding New Hope (Bucks County), Pennsylvania. Chief Ken Coluzzi of the Lower Makefield police received several reports of the “mutant” animal. Eerily, just before Halloween that year, author Jonathan Maberry, who lives in the area, and his wife photographed the “Yeti” in a New Hope parking lot. A local newscaster, Don Polec, also saw the animal, which he said was nearly the size of a German Shepherd dog and grayish in color. Polec wrote an article on the beast in the aftermath of his sighting. The beast as photographed by Maberry seems to be a mangy something or other, but whether it’s a fox, a coyote, or even a domestic dog can’t be said for sure.

One of the things I had mentioned to Naomi was that a perusal of Chad Arment’s Varmints (an invaluable resource on reports of strange carnivores) turned up no older reports of animals resembling the Blue Dogs. In fact, in general the Elmendorf carcass from 2004 is the first mention of them I could track down. There are older reports of canine animals from the same general area as the Blue Dog sightings, but they seem to be of hyena-like animals with hair. There are a few reports of black, canine “vampire” animals from other locales in the southern United States (similar to the sightings of bizarre animals sometimes reported in conjunction with animal mutilations in Britain), but none from Texas proper; this possibly implies that the Blue Dogs are a fairly new phenomenon, whether they are an outside species that for whatever reason migrated to Texas only a few years ago or whether they’re an indigenous one of fairly recent vintage.

Back in the East, an article appeared in the Baltimore Sun a few years ago stating that game wardens were concerned with a recent upswing in reported cases of mange. It is tempting to wonder whether the Texas dogs are merely one facet of a larger phenomenon.

Samson foxes, mentioned by others, are another possibility for the appearances. These are gray foxes which lose much of their hair during the summer months. It is notable that many of these reports of hairless canines take place in the summer and early autumn. Many also seem to be considerably larger than foxes, and it’s interesting to consider whether a similar phenomenon can take place in coyotes.

ANDREW GABLE: Canine Hoofprints

Hey Jon,

Wanted to send you some pictures I took this morning... now, allow me to preface this by saying that these are undoubtedly dog tracks (either from our dog or our neighbours' dogs) planted in snow that had melted for a few days. We've heard from CFZ research tonnes of things on how melting tracks in the snow can resemble something they're not. When I saw these I was struck by how hoof-like some of them appeared, although as I said, they are indeed, dog tracks. Not saying that all of the supposed "devil's footprints" discoveries are of melted dog prints or anything, but just interesting from a general sort of P.O.V.

Andrew

MYSTERY MUSTELID IN NJ

When one thinks of cryptids in New Jersey, most people go no further than the Jersey Devil, which is so ubiquitous that it even lent its name to an unofficial record by the State's most lucrative cultural export - Bruce Springsteen.

However, now there is another one, albeit smaller. I have always been interested in cryptic mustelids, and so was particularly interested in this story, which was sent to us by our Pennsylvania & Maryland rep, Andrew Gable.

There is quite a bit of debate going on about its identity, with the two most common identities being mooted as a mink or a fisher. I personally think it is a sable, but over to you. What do you guys think?

http://centraljersey.com/articles/2009/12/09/the_princeton_packet/news/doc4b1d7da56ef78415048015.txt